


Marquess of Bothersomeshire

by donttellmemyusernameisused



Series: Holmesbury Fics [2]
Category: Enola Holmes (2020)
Genre: Established Relationship, Fluff, case fic?, not really - Freeform, slight angst with a happy ending
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-10-12
Updated: 2020-10-12
Packaged: 2021-03-07 22:00:14
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,797
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/26974798
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/donttellmemyusernameisused/pseuds/donttellmemyusernameisused
Summary: A story where Enola and Tewkebury deal with the struggles of being in a relationship.  There is nothing Enola likes more than when luck is on her side, especially when she runs into Tewky on a case.  At least, that is until Tewky ruins it.A sequel to Her Hand in Marriage, because I want to see them be a couple instead of just get together.
Relationships: Enola Holmes/Viscount "Tewky" Tewksbury
Series: Holmesbury Fics [2]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1968481
Comments: 30
Kudos: 489





	Marquess of Bothersomeshire

It’s not the first time Enola has entered a pub. A few drinks have always been helpful to loosen the lips of men and she fades away into the crowd quite easily once she puts on her boy clothes. So she doesn’t hesitate at all when she waits for her suspect leisurely in the pub one Tuesday afternoon. She sits by the bar nursing a pint of beer, watching the reflection from the mucky glass as men come and go. If things go as planned, she would have the case solved by tomorrow.

“Allow me to buy you another drink,” a man leans against the bar. 

She barely turns from her drink as she feels the man resting his arm close to hers. 

It’s not the first time she is being flirted at either. Tewky can be quite charming when he tries and there are always one or two overzealous clients. But it’s the first time she is flirted at as a boy. 

She scans him quickly – middle-class university student in a tight spot, has a dog and probably fails his classes. “I’m quite fine with my drink, thank you,” she says, trying to make her voice lower. 

“You look forlorn here alone,” the man insists, “and you barely touched your drink.”

“Call me Will,” he reaches over to make his order without waiting for her answer, “you can join our table,” he smiles, “if you don’t like my company, perhaps I can introduce you to my friends. They wouldn’t mind having a boy like you join them.” 

She sighs, ready to refuse again, when she takes a look at the table he comes from and sees her suspect walking towards it. The suspect sits down and the crowd shifts a little, revealing who was sitting behind the wall the whole time. It is none other than the one and only – the Marquess of Basilwether. 

Suddenly, she grins. There is nothing she likes more than when luck is on her side. Handing evidence to her on a silver platter and running into Tewky on a case? Why, this is shaping into a fine afternoon!

She smirks coyly at the man, “if you insist,” and walks towards the table. 

Tewky looks at her with wide shocked eyes and gulps down his beer. She is sandwiched between him and Will. The suspect regards her for a short second before turning to talk to the man on this left. 

“Don’t say anything,” she whispers to Tewky. He blinks twice. 

Will is chatty and some other boys around the table look at her with interest. She smiles noncommittally at them. The case is going exceeding well – the suspect does not give away a lot in his conversations, but much can be deducted from his attire and hands now that she can finally look up close. 

Then, Tewky blows her cover. 

“Gets your hands off my fiancee,” he says.

“What – “

Will’s hand has slowly crept up to cup the small of her back as they were talking and suddenly, Tewky’s hold on his wrist is deadly, unrelenting. 

“Her! _She_ is my bloody fiancée!” Tewky hisses, his handsome face all scrunched up. 

Over the corner of her eye, she notices the suspect looking at her with new interest. Her brain races a thousand miles a second for some ideas to salvage this, and her palm slaps Tewky’s cheek before she can think twice. 

“So you do know you have a fiancée!” she half shouts, “spending your time with companies like this, I thought you had rather been engaged to my brother!” 

It’s wonderful the shades of confused anger and indignation Tewky goes through in one second and it speaks volume to how much he knows her that he doesn’t even protest her accusation. But the entire table stares at the both of them in shock and Enola knows she wouldn’t be able to get anything out of the suspect anymore. She lets out a frustrated groan and storms out of the pub –

“Enola –” 

It is a screaming match the moment they get on his carriage and Enola regrets with every fibre of her being for the part of her brain that has come to identify Tewky’s carriage with safety. _Why did she even go up there?_ She could have just walked off. 

“I was on a _case_ ––”

“Being on a case is not an excuse to do everything as you please, Enola Holmes. We are engaged! – It’s a _promise_ that means something!” 

“Well, I’m _here_ in this carriage with _you_ , ain’t I? It’s not like I went back to his home!” 

Tewky stares at her with horror and Enola breathes. 

“And even if I did, I would have been completely fine taking care of my own!” 

“Well, if this is where you draw a line, then we probably shouldn’t be engaged at all!”

The furious heaves that follow are deafening. She has never seen Tewkesbury so angry. She didn’t think he was _capable_ of being that angry. And she just gapes at his crimson face blotched with tears. Not sure if she was in shock over his angry tears or the words that just came out of his mouth. The carriage rattles along for another block before she tries to open her mouth to say something. But nothing comes out of her – all at once, it hits her how much she too must have been crying, and with that realisation, she can only cry some more. 

She jumps off the carriage as it halts at a crowded juncture. Tewkesbury does not even call after her. 

She must look a state when she gets back to the lodging house, because Mrs. Hansen does not even berate her for dressing like a boy. She fusses to get her tea and even a basin of water to wash her face. She waves her hand at her absentmindedly, as she sags onto her bed. 

“Oh –– Miss Holmes, whatever is the matter?” Warm towel presses against her face firmly and Enola sniffles. 

“I –,” she hiccups, “I am engaged, _was_. I am not sure if I am anymore.” 

She knows Mrs. Hansen has questions, but she just gives her a cup of tea the way she likes it and Enola is grateful. 

She hears the door close and eventually she gets out of bed to change. She blinks at the wall until she falls asleep as the sun sets outside, not even bothered to get up for dinner. 

\-- 

She solves the case –– Thomas Myers has been blackmailing her client with scandalous letters. She could’ve gone to Lestrade immediately, but she thinks about Will and the group of friends Tewky has – the way their faces paled in shock when they realised she wasn’t one of them, Tewky’s frustration last year that his vote against the Criminal Law Amendment Bill stopped nothing, and the way they nervously shifted away from Myers at the pub yesterday. She thinks about her client –– her eyes red from just recounting her misfortune she would not dare to tell a male detective. She wonders just how many letters of Myers has of people and how some of them cannot never even seek help like her client. She is torn between her client’s safety and bringing Myers to the police at all. It’s the first time solving a crime is not enough to solve the problem. And _god,_ she wishes Tewky was here.

“A lady always initiates reconciliation in quarrels, dear,” Mrs. Hansen fixes the mimosas Tewky gave her on her desk. It seems a lifetime ago now when Tewky placed them on the dining table as she wolfed down her porridge in the common kitchen. _Bashful love,_ she gave them a glance and swiftly looked back down at her food. He had picked it up on the way to London, he said. And – 

“I am not a lady,” she says. 

Life goes on. She can’t stop every time she finds herself alone. She stakes out at Myers’s flat for the rest of the afternoon, hoping to find out something about him to solve her current dilemma. Only to find out that he always brings his suitcase with him every time he leaves the flat. It seems he would never let the source of his income out of sight. Makes sense, he would need to guard those letters. But it also makes her job infinitely more difficult. She had thought it would be a simple matter of sneaking in and grabbing the letters when Myers was out. 

She comes back to the lodging house feeling defeated. For the second night in consecutive, she falls asleep with an empty stomach. 

\-- 

She wakes in the dark to something shuffling beside her. Instinctively, her pistol is out before her eyes are opened.

“Enola – Christ, where did you get _that_?” 

_Tewky._

Then, all strings holding her together snap and she launches forward into his arms. For one silly long moment, she thought she would never see him again, the engagement would have been a dream. Looking back, it’s not possible, _logical_ – she knows as soon as she sees him, but for the whole night and day she had thought nothing else. 

“ ‘m sorry,” she mumbles against his shoulders. She is not initiating reconciliation first, because Tewky had _already_ come. It’s an apology enough for her. 

“I am sorry too,” he says, hands tightening around her, “I didn’t mean… I was so upset, Enola, but I didn’t mean it – Please stay engaged with me.” 

Tewkesbury always crafts his words artfully around meanings. He doesn’t say what he doesn’t mean even under pressure. Which was why it shocked her when he said they shouldn’t be engaged in the carriage. Some part of her believed he meant it with all his heart and if he didn’t mean it, it scared her that she had such powers to make him lose control. Still, this time she knows exactly what he means – he apologises for making light of their engagement but he does not apologise for the other thing, for not letting Will touch her, for ruining her cover. 

He would do it again. He is stubborn. She has always known he is stubborn. 

“I would be mad too, if you let strangers touch you like that.” 

He chortles, pulling back, “I wouldn’t.” There is a dampness in his voice that sounds like he might be crying, but Enola can’t see in the dark. 

They sit like that in silence for a while, until Tewkesbury finally notices that she is in nothing but her undergarments. In London, he has always maintained their prudent separation of spheres, all hats clutched to his chest as he talks to her on the streets and polite refusals to set foot in her room — as if he has never held her against his chest in joy, as if she has never clung to his still body in desperation. It was obvious that his fine manners slipped momentarily when he climbed into her windows. She has thought tonight was an exception, like the many exceptions he has given her under the sunlight of his treehouse, but already, he is crawling away. 

He coughs, handing her his coat, and rises to light a candle. Enola knows they are back to their façade of respectability again.

“So, what’s the case?”

“I solved it already,” she huddles into his coat, almost smug. “Myers, the man you met the other day, is blackmailing my client over some love letters she wrote to her former lover. I think he might be blackmailing some of your friends too,” she glares at him pointedly, “for homosexual activities.” 

“Will has been asking me for money recently,” Tewky nods, his eyes anywhere but her bare skin. “If you alert Scotland Yard,” he frowns, settling gingerly at the edge of her bed after realising her chair is filled with books, “and they found anything incriminating on Myers, they would arrest my friends too.”

He still doesn’t look at her. 

“Yes! And all of them would be brought to justice!” 

Tewky’s head snaps to her at last, horror-stricken for a second before seeing her teasing smile. 

“Why do you have to scare me every time?”

Enola giggles, “because you still fall for it,” kicking him gently from the other side of the bed. 

Tewky smiles and looks down at his hands in contemplation. Enola lets that glimpse of their familiarity engulf her. Slowly, she drifts off to a dreamless night. 

\--

Tewky has left when she finally wakes near mid-day. Enola spends the day concocting a complicated plan to take the letters involving Tewky’s friends from Myers and have him arrested before he finds out. If she goes to the pain of destroying the evidence, she doesn’t want him noticing and blabbing about it the first chance he gets. She finds the suitcase similar to the one Myers had in a pawn shop. It would not pass for long if Myers truly knows his property well, but she can make do.

For such a simple case to solve, it has an awful lot of loose ends to be tied, she muses as she swings open the door of the lodging house in a rush, tired after running around the entire London for the whole day. 

Immediately, she is assaulted by Mrs. Hansen trying to fix the mess of her hair. 

“Your gentleman is here, dear.” 

_Curious_ , Tewky is not in the habit of visiting twice in a row. 

“He didn’t bring you any flowers,” Mrs. Hansen frowns disapprovingly at her. 

“No?” Enola blinks. That’s not like Tewky at all –– _there was no flower last night either_ , she recalled and immediately scolds herself for how spoiled of affections she has become. Perhaps she has misread his distance, perhaps it was residual anger not propriety that caused him to crawl away. Her breath hinges at the idea. 

“Remember what I said, a lady always initiates reconciliation,” Mrs. Hansen is still fussing over her hair, “go on, dear.” 

Tewskebury is sipping tea and circling the newspaper when she walks in. He dresses better than anyone in the room. She takes in details without meaning to –– the dark circles and lack of sleep, slightly messy hair that indicates he was in a hurry, the same clothes from yesterday, the mud that tells her he had taken a round in Covent Garden. 

_Why didn’t he bring me flowers then?_ She thinks and promptly thinks nothing at all when he smiles at her, corner of his tired eyes fading away to something gentle. Instantly, she can breathe again. 

“What’s that for?” he nods at the suitcase she does not she has been clutching to her chest. 

“Suitcase,” she answers, distracted, “I am planning to switch suitcase with Myers. Take out what he has of your friends and switch it back.” 

Tewky frowns at her in perplexion or maybe disappointment. She cannot really tell anymore. 

“It’s a work in progress,” she hastens to explain, which is true – she hasn’t figured out how she can time Scotland Yard’s arrest of Myers before he finds out the missing contents in his suitcase, but it was not what she wants to say. 

“I guess you wouldn’t be needing this then,” he dangles in front of her a small bottle of liquid. 

When Enola says nothing, he stutters, “ _tsūsensan,_ it’s an Eastern herbal anaesthetic. I have never made them before so I am not sure about the dosage, but I thought, it would be useful on Myers? The ingredients are hard to find, all rare Eastern flowers and herbs, so I can’t make a lot…”

He babbles on when he gets no response from her, explaining how he has some of those flowers in Basilwether Hall’s greenhouse and that he can make more later if she finds it useful, that he would never hinder her work if he can help it, that he is sorry, _Enola, please say something_ ––

“– that’s why you didn’t get me flowers,” she blurts, and feels the heat rise to her cheeks. 

“What?”

“You didn’t get me flowers. This time. You always do.”

Enola sees the moment realisation hits him, “you thought I was still cross at you.” 

She turns away –– “Enola, I am sorry,” and she can hear the smug teasing in his voice, “I would get your twice the amount of flowers next time.” 

“No,” she clears her throat because there is enough of this _silliness_ , “it’s fine. Thank you. This _tsūsensan_ is made out of flowers.” 

She doesn’t look up to meet his soft chuckle. _Marquess of Bothersomeshire_ , indeed.

“Would you go with me? To drug Myers,” she asks eventually, when she runs out of tea she can politely sip. 

He nudges her under the table, “as if I would let you have all the fun without me.” 

**Author's Note:**

> I struggled with writing this more than I did with Her Hand in Marriage, because Enola's voice flows much less fluidly in my head than Tewky's. I am not sure if I did everyone in the story justice. But it's out now, and there is no taking it back.


End file.
